


Bread and Butter For a Smile

by alittleduck



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley's hiss as a metaphor for gay repression, M/M, Pre-Arrangement (Good Omens), They Are In Love And On Opposite Sides, mix of book and tv canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-05-01 16:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19181902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittleduck/pseuds/alittleduck
Summary: In 1054, an Angel and a Demon walked into a bar. They left with an Arrangement. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, instead of what it is: a five of diamonds played on the third card draw of an ineffable poker game.Or, I have some thoughts on Crowley, gay lisps, and Being In Love But On Opposite Sides.





	Bread and Butter For a Smile

**Author's Note:**

> had some RLLY strong feelings here lads went absolutely wild and could not stop thinking of the six feet under line that was like 'coming out doesn't make life better, it makes life possible' and then i went and wrote this (title is of course from queen)

 

In the beginning, there was fire. This was the first thing Adam was aware of when he left the garden. Before food, before the shelter, before making the cold nights warm with Eve, before the screaming children, there must be a fire.

Or, put differently, Adam was starting to grasp, tentatively and with his new and unsure mind, what many humans would later come to know at the moment of their birth: that survival came before living. Adam would try to explain all this to the children Eve would beget. He would try as best as he could to explain that he had been thrust out of paradise and thrust alone into the wild, untamed awareness of his own mortality because he questioned the status quo, because he trusted when he should have believed, because he valued living over survival; but all he could talk about was the fire, the importance of the fire, over and over again.

His children would look at him and they would nod and Adam would think they understood, each time, what he was telling them. But each time, one by one, they would turn away from him and into the wild untamed awareness of their mortality. They would question the status quo. They would let the fire die on hot nights and forget to gather the wood in wet summers. Some of them died. Some of them left Adam. Some of them returned. Some he turned away.

Eve did not speak to him after he turned the first child away. Adam begged, and pleaded and cried and Eve told him to let the fire die, to let her warm him, to let them warm each other, like it had been. But Adam was afraid and Adam wanted to live more than he wanted to live with Eve.

The fire was the most important thing.

When he woke up in the morning, Eve was gone.

 

* * *

 

**A few years later:**

 

“It’s about survival, Assiraphale -- Asssira --- Sssira -- Angel,” Crawly enunciated, slowly. “The humanss,” he said, in the same slow and measured tone, “do not like the -- they find ssnakes to be a -- evidence of the Devil.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow at Crawly. “And?” he asked. “They’re not wrong, are there?”

Crawly rolled his eyes. “They are."

“For His sake, Crawly, this is ridiculous.” Aziraphale took off his helmet. “I can’t fight you like this.”

Crawly wiggled his sword threateningly.

Aziraphale, though he desperately wanted to, did not roll his eyes. “Really, my dear boy,” he cleared his throat awkwardly. “I can’t do it. And besides, I rather -- liked the hiss, if you must know.”

“You --” Crawly stopped.

Aziraphale stared at the ground. “You know, clear demonic energies. Easy to go up to a human and be all, ‘well, there’s a chap, have you noticed any strange hissing men around here causing a ruckus?’ and get a clear answer. Not many hissers. A few lispers,” Aziraphale said. “Poor children. Difficulty with the ‘r’ sound. Voice too trapped in their cheeks.”

“Don’t patronize me, Ass -- Angel!” Crawly snapped. His voice was a strange, measured cadence that Aziraphale had never heard before. He didn’t like it. His vocabulary was also strangely devoid of the 's' words Aziraphale was sure Crawly had used to love.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Aziraphale told him. “I just don’t understand why.”

The soldier next to Aziraphale coughed.

“There, there,” Aziraphale told him absent-mindedly, waving his hand in the soldier's direction.

“Of course _you_ can't understand why,” Crawly said.

“Well, now, you aren’t giving me a sporting chance,” Aziraphale complained. “And that’s just not fair! It’s very possible I _could_ \--”

“It’s just,” said the soldier whose throat Aziraphale had recently Blessed, “are we not going to be fighting the army of hell anymore?”

“Not at the moment, no,” Aziraphale admitted.

“Should I be --” the soldier began, gesturing a bit crassly with his large (non-flaming, Aziraphale would like to add) sword.  

“Oh, ss -- close your mouth!” Crawly snapped his fingers at the man, who fell to the ground.

Immediately, Aziraphale dropped to check the man’s pulse. “Crawly --”

“Relax, A -- Angel. I haven’t killed him.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, “good then. We can go back to talking about this absurd voice thing, then.”

“No,” Crawly said. “We won’t.”

“But --”

“I’ve got to go,” Crawly told Aziraphale, never mind that his current assignment was to find and thwart Aziraphale, “Orders.”

“Oh, that one was quite good, Crawly,” Aziraphale told him enthusiastically. It was alright that he was enthusiastic, he told himself, because it was his job to love all of God’s creatures, even those who were evil and couldn’t love anyone back. “Almost no hiss!”

“I --!” Crawly struggled, bright red, with what to say, before giving up altogether and wrapping his long billowing coat tight around his body and crossing his arms. It made Aziraphale want to smile, even though Crawly was the Enemy and Must Be Destroyed At All Costs. He mumbled something into his arms.

“What?” Aziraphale asked.

“I said,” Crawly yelled loudly and in a distinctly off-putting sort of way, “I’m thinking about changing the name!”

“From Crawly? Why ever would you want to do that?”

Crawly shrugged. “Changing with the timess,” he said and Aziraphale didn’t point out that the hiss was back.

As far as answers went, changing wasn’t one Aziraphale personally understood. Things were perfectly all right as they were. They were hopeless and ineffable and kind of miserable but Aziraphale for the past half a millennia, Azirpahale had just assumed that was the way things were supposed to go and anyway, he was sure that he could get into all kinds of trouble for questioning that.

Aziraphale didn’t say any of those things to Crawly. Instead, he just said, “I’m sure you’ll choose a good name! Er, wait,” he muttered, realizing his mistake, “I mean, a terrible name. A terrible, demon-y name that’ll make --”

“Ssee you next century,” Crawly thankfully interrupted, cutting Aziraphale off before he could really wind up.

“Wait!” Aziraphale called after him. “Shouldn’t we be fighting for the glory of Heaven or such and such?”

Crawly looked back on him. “Do you really want to?”

“Well, no --” Aziraphale admitted. “But --”

“Then let’s not, and say we did.”

“But -- we can’t do that!” Aziraphale objected. “That’s -- wrong.”

Crawly shrugged. “You do whatever you need to do, Angel.” He gestured around the dimly lit battleground, men screaming and writhing on the ground. “But do you really think they need one more soldier?”

“Perhaps not -- not a soldier,” Aziraphale admitted. “Perhaps you’re -- I mean to say, I ought to be doing other, non-killing things. I really don’t like it,” he told Crawly. “Blood and death and the whole thing. But I’ve got to be here! To thwart you!”

Crawly shrugged. “I’m leaving.”

“Right,” Aziraphale said. Then: “Why’s that again?”

“Other cessssspools of moral inequity,” he told Aziraphale. “Also, the hissing thing. Getss a bit dangerous on a battlefield.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Right, then. I’ll -- see you? Next century, was it?”

Crawly saluted, and then he was off.

 

* * *

 

Crawly was as good as his word. For the next ninety-eight years, Aziraphale saw neither scale nor tail of Crawly’s head. He would never have admitted it, but it worried him. In the past few centuries since God in all Her almighty wisdom had seen fit to create Earth, Aziraphale had gotten used to seeing the demon around. And now that he wasn’t there, Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself.

Aziraphale wouldn’t hear the expression ‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer’ until well into the fifteenth century at which point he would get it commissioned for a throw pillow, but it was exactly the sort of sentiment he would find himself expressing to Home Office to explain what he was doing in the middle of a particularly green patch of the Amazon. Crawly liked plants, Aziraphale tried to explain. He was _sure_ to be here. Heaven had sent Azirphale back to his post in what would later be known as the Middle East.

Aziraphale kept looking. He told himself that he was only looking for trouble, to thwart, obviously. If Crawly happened to be nearby? Then Aziraphale was just doing his job.

That’s how Aziraphale first noticed the children -- and later, the adults -- with strange voices, a trend towards a strange, lisping sort of speech. He hadn't paid them much mind, before, but they reminded him of Crowley, with their little syllabant ‘s’ and the ‘r’ that got stuck in their teeth. At first, once he was able to suss out that their -- speech impediments -- were not Crowley’s doing and therefore not a threat to humanity, God or the world at large, he ignored them.

They were not part of an evil plot of any sort and therefore, not his business. Perhaps they were part of an ineffable one, but that wasn’t for Aziraphale to wonder about. Think about. Only, the more he did think about it, the more he didn’t understand _how_ it could be part of some ineffable plan. Oh, it was well and good when they were two or four or even five but the older children? The adults? It was positively cruel, what happened. How they were treated -- what the other humans did to them! There was mocking and rejection and -- the utter dismissal! Aziraphale had to work very hard to not wonder why God had chosen to make the world so very hard.

He watched young children, practicing over and over in front of mirrors, children crying, adults stifling their thoughts, people withdrawing. He wrote to Heaven, once, inquiring after the purpose of the speech problems in various young humans, but Heaven had never written back. It must be ineffable, Aziraphale had concluded then, not understanding why it made his chest feel tight.

Aziraphale drew a short breath. He did not need to breathe, because he was an inhuman principality, but sometimes it was oddly calming. It was not calming now. Now, it just made his chest feel tighter than it ever was and Aziraphale, without allowing himself to question or wonder why, redoubled his efforts to find Crawly.

Perhaps, he thought, the demon had gotten himself into some sort of trouble. Maybe someone had seen his eyes or heard him his -- but that was silly, and did not bear thinking about.

He did not find Crawly. Instead, it seemed like all he could find was human after human, struggling to speak. Struggling to get the words they wanted to say past their mouth. There was no helping them, no curing, Aziraphale told himself. It’s ineffable. Part of the plan.

There was no helping, no curing, no saving, but Aziraphale couldn’t turn himself away from them, from these humans. At first, he thought he could do it. He could simply watch, be a silent witness to the unkindness of man. But Aziraphale couldn’t. He’d known he couldn’t. He’d known. He'd never been that type of Angel. 

It was just that -- Aziraphale couldn’t bear to watch these humans, struggling so powerfully against something so -- ridiculous. So normal. So unimportant. And worse, the other humans could be so -- so thoughtless, about it. Aziraphale wondered if that was perhaps not the real reason that Crowley wanted so desperately to get rid of his hiss.

So he didn’t watch. Instead, he Blessed. Blessed them with Luck and with Strength and with Determination and with Hope. It was the right thing to do, Aziraphale assured himself, and that was the only reason he did it. It had nothing to do with Crawly, his Adversary and Enemy Until the End Times.

 

* * *

 

When Aziraphale finally ran into Crawly, nearly a century later, there were thick shades obscuring his vision and nearly all traces of a hiss were gone from his voice -- unless he was very angry, or very drunk. He went by Crowley, then.

Aziraphale immediately offered him a bottle of wine.

 

* * *

 

Aziraphale kept an eye on the humans, though. With the high reedy voices and the soft lisp. Many of them turned out to be homosexuals, which surprised Aziraphale. Aziraphale wondered, a tad fearfully if that was yet another reason Crowley had wanted to vanquish his own hiss. But surely Hell was not -- did not frown on these sorts of exchanges, these sorts of lustful moments. Surely they were celebrated? 

Sins and the nature therein was not a subject Aziraphale liked to dwell in. Love could not be a sin and yet people were punished for it.

Aziraphale watched these humans, these homosexuals, these people. They couldn’t hide themselves at all -- not like Crowley could or -- others. Not the ones who spoke in rhymes or lisps or prayers. They never quite got it, the key to blending in. Aziraphale thought he understood them even better than Crowley could. Aziraphale had never gotten the key to blending in either. 

He’d tried to Bless them all -- though Heaven had come down on him for that, sending him a strongly worded letter about superfluous Miracles. He tried savings Blessings for them, after that, but there were too many people in the world to help all -- let alone enough -- of them. Humans did what humans did best: they multiplied. Perhaps, Aziraphale would think, stuck twenty-eight minutes in standstill traffic outside of London, that you’d think that God in All Her Infinite Wisdom might’ve seen fit to create more of these “homosexuals”. Save him some time on his commute at any rate. Reduce the population. 

Crowley always laughed at that one, though sometimes he made pointed and unfair comments about Her so-called Infinite Wisdom that Aziraphale did not appreciate at all or find funny in the slightest and certainly never thought of during particularly dull board room meetings with Gabriel.

Gabriel, Aziraphale couldn’t help but think, always spoke with a strong, deep voice. There was something important there, Aziraphale knew. Something he was beginning to understand. Something about how vulnerable Crowley looked now without his glasses on. Something about the black, and the outfits and the car and the hair. Something Aziraphale wouldn’t begin to understand until centuries later, in a bombed-out church in a town that would eventually be called London.

 

* * *

 

Eve was the first person to walk the world. She did not tell anyone when she left and she did not think she would return to see Adam or her children again. Adam, for all his faults, would keep the children alive. She did not think he would be able to keep them happy. But that was not something anyone could do.

Maybe, if they could do it over again, they could do it right.

Eve did not think the fire was important. She did not know how to explain to Adam that it wasn’t the fire that mattered at all. Partially, she didn’t want to argue with him. And partially, Eve wanted to live. She thought that perhaps it wasn’t the fire that mattered but the gathering around the fire. But she did not believe in herself enough to test herself to destruction and so she did not fight.

Instead, she left. She left to wander and as she wandered, she wondered. The world was beautiful and terrible and large and there were so many places she would never go or never see or never know. The sun was big sometimes and small others. The sky was blue on good days and grey on bad ones and nothing was better than a sitting under a large tree, leafing out, on a hot, dry summer day.

On her seventeenth year alone on the earth, Eve was clipped by a falling rock and died. As she died, her mind flashed only briefly to Adam. She would have been shocked to know that he had died some years earlier and even more shocked to know that she had been right and that it wasn't the fire that saved them but the gathering.

Fires, it turned out, could not protect you from floods or sadness or heartbreak. Or, as it turned out, falling rocks.   


End file.
